But...if you entered a competition that specified that no dogs were allowed to enter and won, then could you complain about the losing entrants saying "but he's a dog - his bio says he is!"

It's exactly the same with Elena who won the last round - her Facebook page says that she's a professional photographer - she may not be in reality, butshe says that she is!

When the organisers turn around and say "OK, on the internet she says that she's a professional photographer but we've spoken to her her and now she says she isn't - so we're going to give her the prize anyway" how does that make everybody else feel? You know, the people who subscribe to AP, work from six in the morning to five thirty at night in a crappy telesales job every day of the week and sometimes...justsometimes...get out at weekend to take a few pictures if they've got any energy left...how do they feel about it?

How they feel - working purely on my own reaction - is that they feel (please excuse the language) shit upon.

Feel free to change APOTY from the competition that it was into something beyond the majority of your readers if it's going to increase your revenue - that's the way that the world works. Just don't try to convince us that it's still fair to the little guys and girls - they're the ones who actually buy your magazine by the way - as you do it.

But...if you entered a competition that specified that no dogs were allowed to enter and won, then could you complain about the losing entrants saying "but he's a dog - his bio says he is!"

It's exactly the same with Elena who won the last round - her Facebook page says that she's a professional photographer - she may not be in reality, butshe says that she is!

When the organisers turn around and say "OK, on the internet she says that she's a professional photographer but we've spoken to her her and now she says she isn't - so we're going to give her the prize anyway" how does that make everybody else feel? You know, the people who subscribe to AP, work from six in the morning to five thirty at night in a crappy telesales job every day of the week and sometimes...justsometimes...get out at weekend to take a few pictures if they've got any energy left...how do they feel about it?

How they feel - working purely on my own reaction - is that they feel (please excuse the language) shit upon.

Feel free to change APOTY from the competition that it was into something beyond the majority of your readers if it's going to increase your revenue - that's the way that the world works. Just don't try to convince us that it's still fair to the little guys and girls - they're the ones who actually buy your magazine by the way - as you do it.

But...if you entered a competition that specified that no dogs were allowed to enter and won, then could you complain about the losing entrants saying "but he's a dog - his bio says he is!"

It's exactly the same with Elena who won the last round - her Facebook page says that she's a professional photographer - she may not be in reality, butshe says that she is!

When the organisers turn around and say "OK, on the internet she says that she's a professional photographer but we've spoken to her her and now she says she isn't - so we're going to give her the prize anyway" how does that make everybody else feel? You know, the people who subscribe to AP, work from six in the morning to five thirty at night in a crappy telesales job every day of the week and sometimes...justsometimes...get out at weekend to take a few pictures if they've got any energy left...how do they feel about it?

How they feel - working purely on my own reaction - is that they feel (please excuse the language) shit upon.

Feel free to change APOTY from the competition that it was into something beyond the majority of your readers if it's going to increase your revenue - that's the way that the world works. Just don't try to convince us that it's still fair to the little guys and girls - they're the ones who actually buy your magazine by the way - as you do it.

Cheers, Jeff

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I totally understand your position.

However, the reality is that it was never possible to tell if entrants were amateur or not, if they didn't want people to know. Probably even harder in the days before web sites existed.

My post was simply to point out that what people say they are on the Internet should be taken with a pinch of salt, because people can say they're anything they like.

Lastly, there's no difference in skill level between amateur and pro photographers, and you only need one shot to win if it's the best shot. You can argue that being a pro and spending more hours in the day taking shots gives you a better chance at getting a keeper, I might argue that planning, executing and perfecting a single shot takes the same amount of time for anyone, and you only need one to win.

Tony, Nick - I'm just annoyed and I let the situation get the better of me. I apologise for that.

If AP wants to run an international competition that's open to professionals and amateurs alike and allow them to submit images that have previously won other international competitions then that's absolutely fine. There are other competitions that run along the same lines and they're very popular.

I think that what galls me is that AP appears to be doing this whilst trying to tell us that it's still the same old competition that it used to be.

I think perhaps that the best course of action as far as this is concerned would be for me to just stay well away from the subject and refrain from commenting further.

But...if you entered a competition that specified that no dogs were allowed to enter and won, then could you complain about the losing entrants saying "but he's a dog - his bio says he is!"

It's exactly the same with Elena who won the last round - her Facebook page says that she's a professional photographer - she may not be in reality, butshe says that she is!

When the organisers turn around and say "OK, on the internet she says that she's a professional photographer but we've spoken to her her and now she says she isn't - so we're going to give her the prize anyway" how does that make everybody else feel? You know, the people who subscribe to AP, work from six in the morning to five thirty at night in a crappy telesales job every day of the week and sometimes...justsometimes...get out at weekend to take a few pictures if they've got any energy left...how do they feel about it?

How they feel - working purely on my own reaction - is that they feel (please excuse the language) shit upon.

Feel free to change APOTY from the competition that it was into something beyond the majority of your readers if it's going to increase your revenue - that's the way that the world works. Just don't try to convince us that it's still fair to the little guys and girls - they're the ones who actually buy your magazine by the way - as you do it.

Cheers, Jeff

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1. Can you direct me to the sentence on her website where she says she is professional? I agree she presents the impression of being a pro. But then so do a good many amateurs.
2. You haven't addressed my point that the world is not divided into pros and amateurs, it never has been and its even less true now. Where on the sliding scale from earning 0% income from photography to earning 100% from photography would YOU draw the line, and how would you police that?
3. As Tony says, this has been a problem with APOY (and every other amateur comp) since before the internet was invented. Your David and Goliath view of AP readers vs the world is very quaint but far from accurate. At least one of our readers is a Russian oligarch. If we limited entry to AP readers only, what if one of the 30% of them who earn some or all of their income from photography won it?

1. Can you direct me to the sentence on her website where she says she is professional? Successful doesn't equal 'professional', and having a professional quality website doesn't make you a professional either. I agree she presents the impression of being a pro. But then so do a good many amateurs.
2. You haven't addressed my point that the world is not divided into pros and amateurs, it never has been and its even less true now. Where on the sliding scale from earning 0% income from photography to earning 100% from photography would YOU draw the line, and how would you police that?
3. As Tony says, this has been a problem with APOY (and every other amateur comp) since before the internet was invented. Your David and Goliath view of AP readers vs the world is very quaint but far from accurate. At least one of our readers is a Russian oligarch. If we limited entry to AP readers only, what if one of the 30% of them who earn some or all of their income from photography won it?

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Hi Nigel

I said that I was going to stay away from this subject but you're making it very difficult for me.

1. If you read back over my comments you'll see that the quote about her being a professional is from her Facebook page - not her website.

There's a capture from her page. If I'm misinterpreting it in some way then I apologise, but to me it appears that she's listing her occupation as a self-employed international portrait/fashion photographer.

2. There are very few competitions where professionals and amateurs can compete on an equal footing. Anybody can go out and buy a set of top quality golf clubs, but in any competition you're going to find that the professional beats the amateur any day - that's not to say that the amateur can't hit a hole-in-one every now and then, just that the professional - by merit of spending more time practicing - has a greater chance of doing so. Surely logic dictates that if I'm paid to go out and take photographs every day of the week - sometimes accompanied by professional models, make-up artists, stylists, lighting artists and the odd assistant then I'm going to have a statistically greater chance of turning out a decent portrait than some bloke who's just been let out of the factory for the weekend? Not to say that the bloke from the factory is incapable of doing it - I'm just talking about the statistical likelihood.

You ask where I'd draw the line as far as how much people earn from photography and how I'd police it. As far as I recall, for APOY it was yourselves who drew the line in the original rules of the competition...and then amended them after the competition had started. How I'd police them? Well, if somebody says that they're a professional photographer on their Facebook page (see extract above) then I'm pretty sure that would provide something of a clue.

3. You've got me on this one - you have far more information about the readership of the magazine than I do. If your oligarch earns £50k per year from photography, but that's a fraction of a percent of what he earns in interest on the many millions that he has in the bank, then based on the original rules he counts as an amateur.

As a side note, I don't think I've asked for the competition to be restricted to AP readers by the way, so I'm not going to address that one.

Look. If you've spent any time looking at the forum you'll know that generally I'm there as the comic relief. I tend to avoid the heavy political arguments, the soul-searching questions about whether photography is really an art or not. For god's sake - I managed to defuse a nasty argument with a comment about a pigeon! In Bolton!

I'm not here to get involved in this sort of thing...but for some reason the current situation has really annoyed me. Last year I managed to crack the top fifty in just one of the months and I was happy with that.

Now Nigel - please - I'll promise not to question your competition any more if you'll just let me slide back into the obscurity of telling silly stories and making the odd smart-arse comment on the forums. Deal?

As an AP reader for quite some years I felt negatively about the out-sourcing of the comp. and its disappearence from the forum. I only realised yesterday that it falls off the end of the banner for the site (on an ipad) and there is in fact a link to it from this site. Given that the APOY forum section is moribund I had concluded APOY had been cut free of the forum and site completely.

I don't have any interest to join photocrowd. However it would make no difference to my participation, I'm not "good enough" to compete in the sense that I don't have the creativity to go and make a picture for a brief - it is just too stress making - so no personal loss there. Practically spoken the round is announced and sometime later the winning pics appear in the magazine and we watch the points count climb just as it did when one had to send prints plus the entry form cut from the magazine.

The pro-am distinction is interesting. Emotionally I do feel it should live up to the "Amateur" label. However I can't see how a true pro could possibly justify the time to bother or use the title to enhance their business reputation. So they would only join in as a personal, private effort. Thus it matters not.

The multiple entry format and scoring confuses me. The talented Cypriot lady under discussion had I think 3 expert commended images in the mono section. I'm away from home so I haven't been able to cross compare the very confusing round-winners page on photocrowd (available to. non-members) with the AP issue to see if these were scoring images. It would be nice to cross-link this page to the forum APOY section. It took me a while to find and took an age to load. I just want to know if "expert commend" means AP awarded points. I don't care what the crowd thinks but I do care what the AP judges think.

I'd like to think there will be a business review to assess the benefit to AP of this change in hosting. APOY is a really good name for an award but it stands alone. The IP may belong to AP but I don't see APOY as a brand that uniquely defines AP, not with Landscape Photographer of the Year, Garden Photographer of the year, Wldlife Photographer of the Year etc.

AP are selling the competition as Amateur competition then possibly allowing professionals to enter. That is misrepresentation.

Now money is involved because of the addition entries fee that can be bought. So if professionals are not policed out of entering

and allowed to win then it clear case of misrepresentation.

Can see what trading standards say about the situation?

It does look like Elena is a professional photographer

You do a online search for her name and a website comes up telling you she has done magazine shoots, won awards.

When I read a interview with her it sure sound like she works full time as a editorial shooter specializing in portraits.

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You do understand that professionals can be amateurs too, don't you? The words are far from mutually exclusive. The sense of the word "amateur" as used in "Amateur Photographer" has always been closer to the original French meaning - "lover of" - or "devotee", to use the English definition. That being the case, your whole post falls apart as the absolute embarrassing and potentially libelous nonsense that it is.

Why not just rename it APPOY - Amateur Photographer Photographer of the Year?

That way the magazine name is still there, anyone can enter without people getting huffy about their status, Nigel doesn't have to waste his time explaining things on this board, Benchista doesn't get steamed up about potential libel, I get a free subscription for my brilliant idea* and the winner gets a little song to sing...

We're in agreement that IF she is a professional photographer she should be disqualified. The difficulty is in establishing a true definition of what that means in this day and age and whether she qualifies as one. That problem has always existed but now it's more out in the open. Elena claims she earns less that 5% of her income from photography (she's in property, apparently) so she'd still be able to enter under the 10% rule.
There is no easy answer.

We're in agreement that IF she is a professional photographer she should be disqualified. The difficulty is in establishing a true definition of what that means in this day and age and whether she qualifies as one. That problem has always existed but now it's more out in the open.

Well you're assuming we (the readers of AP)want big prizes, major sponsors and the very best images from around the world. Maybe, and it's only my opinion, the readers would like their own competition centred around a British photographic magazine called 'Amateur Photographer' with a small prize and not a little prestige for the winner.

You do understand that professionals can be amateurs too, don't you? The words are far from mutually exclusive. The sense of the word "amateur" as used in "Amateur Photographer" has always been closer to the original French meaning - "lover of" - or "devotee", to use the English definition. That being the case, your whole post falls apart as the absolute embarrassing and potentially libelous nonsense that it is.